Messages

The Messages tab is where you read a stream. It opens in History mode: a paginated list of stored messages, newest first. Click a row and the side panel shows its NATS headers, timing and payload.

The same tab flips to Realtime for live tailing. See Live tail.

Filter and search

Click Filters in the toolbar to open the filter panel:

• Subject: a NATS pattern. * matches one token, a trailing > matches one or more.
• Payload Search: text the decoded or raw payload must contain, ignoring case. Turn on Regular expression to match an RE2 expression as written; start it with (?i) to ignore case. A payload counts as decoded when a Protobuf mapping matches its subject; one natscope only guesses the type of is searched as stored.
• Header: a header the message must carry, as X-Trace or X-Trace=abc. The name ignores case, a value must match exactly; for a header sent several times, any one of its values does, as do all of them as shown, joined by , .
• Start Sequence: begin the listing at a stream sequence.
• Start Date & Time: jump to the first message published at or after a timestamp. Quick chips: Now, 1h ago, 24h ago, 7d ago.
• Stop at Sequence and Stop at Date & Time: where the search ends, in reading order.

Apply runs the filter, Reset clears it. Active filters show as chips above the list.

Search the whole stream

Payload Search, Header and the stop points search the stream on the server instead of filtering the loaded page. The server reads from the start point in the list's order: newest first by default, oldest first after a jump to a time. It applies the subject filter itself and decodes Protobuf only when a payload does not match as stored.

A line above the list shows how many messages the search read and how many matched, with a Stop button. One search reads at most 100,000 messages, runs at most 20 seconds and returns at most 500 matches, so a busy cluster never gets an unbounded scan. When it reaches one of these limits, or you stop it, Search further continues from where it stopped without skipping or repeating a match. The arrow keys in the message details step through the matches.

Searching a work queue stream reads the messages one by one instead of through a consumer, which would remove them.

Read a payload

The payload viewer has several views of the same bytes:

• Decoded when a Protobuf mapping matches the subject, or type detection recognizes the payload
• JSON for a JSON payload
• Raw text
• Hex
• Wire, the Protobuf fields read without a schema

NATS headers sit alongside the payload.

Paging and direction

The toolbar page-size dropdown offers 25, 50, 100, 250 and 500 messages per page. Paging works forward and backward from any sequence. Set the defaults for both under Settings → Preferences → Messages.

Compare two messages

Diff turns on compare mode. Select two messages and Natscope shows a field-level diff of their payloads, so you can see what changed between two events on the same subject.

Export

Export writes messages to JSON, NDJSON or CSV. The full-range scope walks the whole stream server-side with complete payloads (no preview truncation), showing a progress bar you can cancel.

Act on a message

• Edit & resend loads a message back into the publish form with its subject, payload and headers.
• Delete removes a message by sequence, with an optional secure erase.
• Bookmark saves a message with a note so you can find it again.